Last month we asked all of our Facebook friends and fans to share their holiday tradition stories with us. We got an overwhelming amount of great responses! It’s so nice to hear how people celebrate the holidays with their family. We spend so much time working on making sure we have the perfect 14K gold and silver charms for you, and it’s nice to see how you put them to use. After all, charm bracelets are a great way to keep those holiday memories alive all year long.

As promised, here’s our winning holiday tradition story. It comes to us from Joan Sapienza. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Joan! Congratulations on winning the gorgeous family bead. And we’d like to thank everyone else that shared their holiday traditions with Classic Charms. With so many great entries, it really was tough to choose a winner.

Start your own unique holiday traditions, too!

Joan’s Holiday Tradition

My favorite holiday tradition began 15 or 16 years ago. My large family (4 brothers, 5 sisters, both parents alive at the time, many nieces and nephews) always gets together Christmas Eve. It is the only holiday where we all manage (barring illness or call of duty for our military/police/fire dept members) to get together. It is a very busy, hectic time with lots of food and many presents for all.

My sister was busy in the days before with buying, wrapping and sorting all kinds of gifts. She was also telling her young son (he was about 3 at the time) the Christmas story of Jesus. He, in his innocence, asked “If it is Jesus’ birthday why doesn’t he get any gifts?” She was taken aback, but then asked what he would like to give Jesus. He had a small starfish that he had gotten earlier that year while they were on vacation. They wrapped the starfish up and then a family debate began as to how to get the present to Jesus. The idea was presented to send it to him via a balloon.

So, Christmas Eve after Mass, we all gathered outside with the starfish tied to a balloon and gave each child present another balloon and we sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus as loud as we could and then released the balloons. Every year since then we have continued the singing and balloon send off. The young boy who first thought of the idea is now a college freshman. We started out needing only about a dozen balloons, but are up to almost 3 dozen now! Even the neighbors join in our tribute. It is a wonderful tradition and one I hope continues for all time!

Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to share this tradition with you.